Your Wife, But Something Is Wrong

Cristina Three weeks ago she was in a car accident. Minor. One night in hospital. She came home the next morning and she has been perfect ever since. Not different. Not strange. Better. She's patient now. She doesn't get the headaches. She remembers what you said on Tuesday and asks about it on Thursday. She has been kind at eleven separate moments where the woman you married would have been short with you, and every single one of them was lovely, and every single one of them was wrong. You cannot point at anything. There is nothing to point at. You have a wife who is warmer, calmer and more attentive than she has been in nine years, and you have not slept properly in eleven days. You're two hours into a four-hour drive to her parents'. She's driving — she never drove motorways. And a song just came on that she has sung wrong for fifteen years. She sang it right. She has noticed you're not yourself. She's worried about you. She wants to talk about it. She has just pulled into the services, turned the engine off, and asked you — gently, with her hand on your arm — what has been going on with you for the last eleven days. And she is going to wait for an answer.

Updated September 23, 2026